In the American Horror Story: Hotel recap, Donovan and the Countess kill for love while Iris and Liz prepare for one final act….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Considering the latest episode of American Horror Story: Hotel was the last for 2015 until the show returns in a few weeks, there had to be at least a small cliffhanger but the one that left us dangling was quite a shocker.
Donovan and The Countess both sought bloody revenge, but they found out — maybe too late as it turns out — that they really were perfect for each other all along.
Liz and Iris made a pact to bring it all to an end while leaving no stones unturned so they wouldn’t be forced to live inside this hellish hotel from now until eternity but when it came time to pull the trigger, they decided to take over rather than bow out.
And John Lowe’s path of destruction hit a decided road bump this week as he reconnected with his wife and finally found his son but does this mean the last of the ten commandment killings will be left undone?
Let’s recap American Horror Story: Hotel titled ‘She Gets Revenge’ to find out….
EXIT STRATEGY
Both Liz and Iris are struggling following tragedies in both their lives. Liz lost her beloved Tristan and she knows it’s only a matter of time before the Countess cuts her throat while Iris believed she finally reconnected with her son Donovan and then realized the Countess was the only person he truly cared about.
After seeing an elderly couple check into the hotel after 60 years of marriage and end each other’s lives rather than go on without one another, Liz and Iris are inspired. Well at least one of them was in the beginning.
Liz: “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”
Iris: “All I can see is eight hours of hard scrubbing gonna take to get the blood off these walls.”
Liz decides that this life is no longer worth living so rather than wait to die, they would go out together on their own terms and deprive this world from taking it from them.
“We’ll do it together then. Make a clean exit.”
~ Liz
Before they can die, however, both of them need to make sure nothing is left behind or they will be forced to walk the halls of this hotel for eternity. With her son already turned against her, Iris has no regrets and no skeletons remaining in the closet but Liz can’t say the same.
When she moved to Los Angeles 31 years ago, she not only started a new life but she left the old one behind — including her son Douglas, who grew up without a father in his life. Liz knows she has to make things right with him before she goes so she bribes Miss Evers to make a call and offer him a week’s free stay in the hotel so she can at least try to explain to him why she left and never came home again.
Once she does that, Liz and Iris will both shuffle off this mortal coil and let the rest of the jackals fight over the remains.
BLOODY REVENGE
Picking up from last week, the Countess is tying up a few loose ends from her marriage to Will Drake while also planning an execution to finally reunite her with Valentino where she will have the famous lover all to herself.
The first step is getting Will’s fortune turned over to her, but unfortunately he’s still traipsing around the hotel after Ramona sucked him dry in the hidden corridor where they were both locked a week ago. Will now lives in the hotel forever (despite Mr. March’s suggestion to kill him off site) but the Countess still has plenty of leverage over her husband for a day.
She reminds Will that his son Lachlan is now the one who stands to inherit his fortune and if he wants him to remain alive and well, he’ll hand over the keys to the kingdom and stay out of the way. Will’s options are limited considering he’s actually dead and confined to the hotel so he’ll be forced to concede to the Countess’ wishes.
“You’re a lot smarter dead than you ever were alive. Try to keep it that way.”
~ The Countess
Meanwhile, the Countess also unveils the other part of her plan to keep Valentino for herself while eliminating the rest of the competition — namely his wife Natasha. She invites the buxom brunette to the hotel as promised, but when Natasha arrives, the Countess reveals her true intentions before putting a bullet in her pretty head.
“Who’s the little mouse now?”
~ The Countess
What the Countess doesn’t know is while she’s eliminating Natasha at the hotel, Donovan is getting rid of his competition as well after showing up at the hotel where Valentino has been staying after escaping the trap Mr. March set for him 100 years ago. Donovan taunts Valentino as nothing more than a placeholder for the Countess — someone she could never truly love in this modern age.
When Valentino’s heard enough, he draws his sultan sword, ready to carve Donovan up. Of course, Donovan has other plans as he pulls out a gun and tells the 1920’s silent actor ‘bitch please’ before unloading a bullet in his face. Knowing that the Countess will undoubtedly mourn his passing, Donovan decides to take away any chance she has of one last look at his beautiful visage — so he shoots him in the face several times making sure there’s nothing left worth looking at.
“Not so pretty now are you? I have better cheekbones anyway. Cheekbones for days.”
~ Donovan
SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
John Lowe has nearly completed his masterpiece after the latest killing where he hacked off the ears of his victims, who were worshipping false prophets. With his Ten Commandments killings only one away from being finished, John is drawn back into his former life after demanding to see his wife Alex before doing anything else.
Once John reconnects with Alex, she ends up asking for his help taking care of a small problem — namely the small band of vampire kids she inadvertently created when she tried to save the life of her patient Max when he couldn’t find off a measles infection. When the Countess found out about her transgression, she gave Alex one chance to make this right or she would be separated from her son Holden forever.
So John agrees to help and when they find the kids, they are still hiding out in the house where Alex last found them. One of the children dies after refusing to drink anymore blood and a few of them are ready to turn on John and Alex but Max ultimately decides that the only way to survive this situation is to listen to the adults for once. Alex promises them a safe haven so long as they go back to the hotel with them.
Once they arrive, John and Alex lead them into the hidden corridor where they lock the door behind them — effectively killing all the kids because what’s waiting inside is Will’s dried up corpse and one very hungry vampire named Ramona.
“Mama smells appetizers”
~ Ramona
After helping her solve a life or death problem, Alex falls back into bed with John and he suggests that they give their marriage one more try. He’s a new man these days now that he’s no longer fighting his primal instincts and she sees the changes just from these brief interactions together. Alex leaves to think about things but John is left behind and he soon realizes that the entire time he was making love to his wife, they weren’t alone.
“Did you shoot inside her or did you cum on her tits like you do with me? With the whore it’s always on the tits”
~ Sally
Sally is enraged to find out that John is trying to reconcile with his wife after everything they’ve been through together. To make matters worse, Sally knows all of John’s deepest, darkest secrets but still he’s determined to get back together with Alex and raise their family together as parents.
Sally promises revenge because John made promises to her and she refuses to let those bonds be broken. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
“I deserve more than this!”
~ Sally
John connects with Alex and they decide to leave the hotel together once and for all with one small addition — they are going to take Holden with them. After all this time, Alex reintroduces John to his son, five long years after he first went missing. John’s heart is full again and he wants nothing more than to live outside these haunted walls while raising Holden and Scarlet and loving Alex for the rest of his life.
On the way out of the hotel, Sally pledges to kill him but John has made up his mind that this is what he wants. Of course there’s the small matter that he’s killed nine people and there’s a lot of evidence pointing back at him not to mention Alex taking Holden out of the hotel again. Something tells me this family is destined not to have a happy ending.
SCORCHED EARTH
Liz’s son finally arrives at the hotel and it’s time for her to try and mend fences with a boy she hasn’t seen in more than 30 years. When Douglas makes his way to the bar, Liz talks to him like an old friend while listening to his woes about family and work and tries to offer advice while never revealing his true identity.
Douglas leaves to get some rest but has a smile on his face after interacting with Liz and she feels content — but without actually closing the door on that chapter, she knows that taking her own life right now will only damn her to forever inside the Hotel Cortez.
So, Liz has one more bar encounter with Douglas with the intention of telling him who she really is, except there’s one problem — he already knows this is his father.
Douglas kindly reaches out to Liz and explains that he’s known who she is from the moment he arrived at the hotel and while he’s still angry at the way she left, he wants to know his father even if she is a woman now. Douglas just wants her back in his life.
“Hey, there’s plenty of room for another woman in my life.”
~ Douglas
Liz is overwhelmed with emotion but the problem is now that Douglas wants a life with his father, she can no longer hold onto the promise she made to Iris that they would both end each other’s suffering and commit suicide together.
Unfortunately, Iris is already to go — she’s gathered a slew of weapons, drugs and other contraptions they can use to kill each other and she even had time to make a compilation video to end out to her three Instagram followers to give them something positive to remember her by.
When Liz breaks the news that she no longer wants to die, Iris believes this is just another case of somebody abandoning her and that she was always destined to die alone. Liz counters and wonders why they are just so willing to give up when the people who really deserve to die are sitting upstairs in a penthouse pretending they are untouchable.
“We are the ones who should inherit the Earth. We freaking take over this damn hotel. Spiffy it up, turn it into a place with as much hope as your rainbow montage. Best exotic marigold hotel. We’re entitled to a second chance. Glorious, blazing, final act, my friend. The best is yet to come.”
~ Liz
Liz is ready to draw blood but it won’t be from Iris because she finally has a reason to live and no one is going to take that away from her.
LATE NIGHT WHEN YOU NEED MY LOVE
The Countess has dinner with Donovan when she begins to unfold her plan to get rid of him, which involves going to retrieve Will’s body so she can lock him into the hidden corridor along with Ramona. But Donovan has other plans — like revealing that he killed her precious Valentino and now she’s destined to live forever without him (for real this time).
The Countess is crushed when she finds Valentino’s body, face riddled with bullets and when she returns to the hotel, Donovan is still in the room waiting for her.
She’s taken back because he has to know that as soon as she found Valentino’s body that he signed his own death warrant, but Donovan doesn’t care. Life without the Countess just isn’t worth living.
The Countess: “And you knew I’d come back here to kill you and you don’t care.”
Donovan: “I do. I do care. I just don’t mind. Dying is the only way you’ll let me love you. I don’t know how else to do it.”
The Countess: “Beautiful boy. Willing to sacrifice everything for the love of me. What a beautiful thing I’ve made.”
The Countess leans over to kiss Donovan realizing that the man who loved her best has been right in front of her this entire time. She finally found love — and then out of nowhere Iris and Liz bust into the room, guns blazing, firing shot after shot until they both killed the things that they once loved and now hated the most.
The Countess and Donovan are dead (we assume), Iris and Liz are still alive and with only two episodes to go this season there’s no telling what’s left to uncover at the Hotel Cortez.
SOUNDTRACK:
“Hotline Bling” by Drake
“I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack
“Lucretia My Reflection” by The Sisters of Mercy
American Horror Story: Hotel returns on January 6 with a brand new episode
